Monthly Archives: November 2014

The admonition, “Speak truth to power” is heard when outrage at injustice leads folks to seek resolution by articulating righteous truth in the face of evil. It is usually an institutionalized evil against which truth is invoked. That is because the power referenced is usually that of some overbearing bureaucracy or unfair action by someone who has enough power to get away with murder.

We should not overly personalize the unjust killing of Michael Brown as an evil simply emanating from just one person, Officer Darren Wilson. That mistake would miss the much larger evil of a culture that routinely dehumanizes and demonizes young Black and Brown men. That culture tolerates and enables the mass incarceration and indiscriminant police killings of youth of color. The rest of us pay little if any attention to the massive injustices of the drug war and the militarization of police. In the U.S., police kill citizens in huge numbers compared to every other industrial nation. We must ask why.

I listened to and watching numerous news, social media, and official channels of communication related to the police killing of Michael Brown and its social and institutional aftermath. Then it dawned on me. This is all about Power speaking to Truth! I could go on extensively describing how this discourse of domination was propagated throughout the so-called “public media” as filtered by the corporatist editorial framework. But then, I wondered what a real conversation between Mr. Power and Mr. Truth might be like. Here’s what I imagined:

Truth: Shooting an unarmed teenager surrendering from a considerable distance is inexcusable and criminal.Power: Officer Darren Wilson was doing his job, just like he described when interviewed on TV by George Stephanopoulos.Truth: Who speaks for Michael Brown?Power: Prosecutor Robert McCulloch followed established procedures in assigning the case to the grand jury. The grand jury reviewed all the evidence brought to it by the prosecutor and found no basis for returning an indictment.Truth: Out of 162,000 cases brought to grand juries in recent years, the record shows that in only 11 cases did the grand jury fail to return an indictment. That is because it’s not supposed to be a trial; it’s supposed to be a presentation of the case against the accused, for the grand jury to determine if there’s enough evidence for a trial. That’s not what happened in this case.Power: Mr. McCulloch presented all the available evidence to the grand jury; it was up to them to determine whether an indictment was warranted.Truth: But the prosecutor acted like a defense lawyer for Officer Wilson. His job was to present the case against Wilson so the grand jury could determine if there was enough evidence to indict him; he failed to do his duty to bring a case to the grand jury; he did just the opposite. He used his considerable power over the grand jury process to assure that an indictment was not returned.Power: From the beginning, the authorities have responded to threats to law and order with measured force, maintaining the social order and insuring safety of the citizens of Ferguson.Truth: At every step, the “authorities” expressed and exercised deep disrespect and contempt for the lives of Black folks. First, they left Michael lying in the street for four and a half hours.Power: The police had to do their forensic investigation and not disturb any evidence.Truth: Then they released a video of a man shoplifting some cigars and claimed it was Michael Brown, right at the same time they announced that Officer Wilson would not be arrested for killing Brown. That’s blatant character assassination after physical murder treated as necessary force, in order to distract from the fact that the police refused to arrest one of their own.Power: The police had to release the video; it was public information and was requested by the press.Truth: They still haven’t been able to identify any press people who actually requested that video. The “authorities” reacted to the peaceful protests of the citizens of Ferguson with massive force, using military equipment and tactics and aggressively forcing peaceful protestors off the streets threatening to shoot them, with total disregard for their humanity and the fact that they were attempting to exercise their first amendment rights to political speech.Power: The protesters were disrupting public order and were a threat to the peace that law enforcement is sworn to protect. Violence was committed against property. There is no need for massive mobilization of all sorts of people in the streets of Ferguson. It just draws outside agitators. The incident was being investigated and the process should have been honored.Truth: The processes that the power elites of Ferguson, Saint Luis County, and similar “authorities” across the nation have used in suppressing the rights of citizens in the name of “order” are little more than a new version of “Jim Crow” laws that oppressed Black folks before the civil rights movement of the 1960s.Power: These outbursts by political movements disrupt the economies of communities like Ferguson and damage race relations in our new “post racial” society.Truth: Just because an African American was elected president does not erase the rampant racism that persists in America. Recoded racism takes many forms. But the worst is the widespread assault on Black populations across the country by law enforcement. Governor Nixon’s preemptive declaration of a state of emergency and mobilization of the National Guard was essentially a degradation ritual. Whether the degraded treatment of people of color is by “stop and frisk” or the selective targeting in the drug war, or by dozens of other techniques, makes little difference. The oppression of the sectors of the population who have been most isolated from economic and social opportunities by an extractive economy of elite privilege continues unabated.

Of course, such a conversation could go on indefinitely. But it would not be resolved. Why? Because we live in a system of oppression and a culture of denial. Only when the values of compassion, justice, and community are restored and the authority of the people over our institutions is reestablished, will the growing insanity of ‘the system’ be overcome.

Do you remember “preventive detention? It was the idea of arresting people on the assumption that they might commit some crime, even though they have not yet done so. The concept never got a lot of public support, since it was such a blatantly unconstitutional approach to law enforcement. That is not to say, however, that it has not been put into practice informally in some places.

But now we see a new twist on the underlying idea of controlling expected bad behavior in a population. Yes, it’s Ferguson, Missouri again. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency ad mobilized the National Guard, as a “precaution” in case “unrest” or violence might break out in Ferguson. One must ask, how do you respond to an emergency before it happens?

The action was taken in anticipation of public anger if the grand jury fails to indict officer Darren Wilson. Yet the governor’s precipitous act is quite consistent with previous police actions there. The entire episode over the past three plus months since Officer Wilson shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown to death, has been characterized by institutional overkill.

The initial peaceful protests in Ferguson were met with a highly militarized show of Robo-cop style brute force. The result, not surprisingly, was increased anger, resentment, and tension. Despite organizers’ efforts to keep it non-violent, some vandalism occurred. It only takes a few rocks thrown to trigger a massive police over-reaction, treating all protestors as illegitimate. But what is clear is that the white power structure in not only Ferguson but Saint Luis County is simply prejudiced. Its actions have been and are based in traditional – if publicly unspoken – racist imaginaries about a presumptive “lawlessness” of the black population. Under the circumstances, that population has remained remarkably restrained. Not so the militarized law enforcement institutions or their leadership.

The preemptive declaration of a state of emergency by Governor Nixon is, by its very presumptions, bigoted. It prejudges the character of the mostly black population of Ferguson and implicitly labels “those people” as “lawless.” The actions of the various police agencies, prosecutors, etc., from local to state, reflect a “them vs. us” mentality in which “they” have to be controlled by force. Lip service is given to the people’s right to freedom of speech while police entrap protestors in physical space where no such right can be exercised. And, of course, the old “outside agitators” meme is also invoked.

The indifference of the mostly white Ferguson police and politicians, and the county and state ‘authorities,’ to the current and historical grievances of black citizens is flagrant. Unrelenting authoritative obliviousness to the reasons for popular anger has fed the understandable public frustration with the handling of the case from the start. That indifference, glossed over with feigned respect for human rights, continues as the major factor in the approach of law enforcement to the black population of St. Louis county.

Similar attitudes among ‘authorities’ can be found all across this nation. They are expressed in different ways and cause diverse local crises when specific instances of police abuse of citizens capture sufficient media attention. Death at the hands of police is commonplace in communities of color in this country.

A complex of converging factors seems to be accelerating both the number of instances and the awareness of the public. What might have been only a story a few years ago is now captured on smart-phone video by passers by. Self-selection of violent personalities into police work and indifference or support for aggression by leadership perpetuate the hostile separation of police from citizen. Problems of community relations are seen as needing a “show of force” as in the absurd twisting of the idea of emergency by Governor Nixon.

Unfortunately, it is all part of a larger process of the pitting of the institutions that protect the interests of the power elites against the people of this country. Police are no longer there to ‘keep the peace’ or ‘serve and protect’ the people. Their mission is to control the population to insure the order imposed by a institutional power structure behind a thin veil of ‘democracy.’ If there were any sense of community or democracy in the state of Missouri, the governor would have been meeting with civic groups in and around Ferguson over the past three months seeking to reach a level of cooperation that could resolve the grievances of the citizens of that town. If “the‘authorities” were integral to communities, the gunning down of an unarmed teenager by a police officer would have triggered an immediate investigation by a civilian review body to both establish the facts and determine how such a tragedy could be prevented in the future.

Quite the opposite has happened. Police and politicians bungled and overreacted at every step. They all dodged and covered. The people were enclosed, to protest in as much isolation from media coverage as possible. Neither indictment nor its absence will have much of any bearing on the ability of the power structure to address its failed relationship to the citizenry that is its only real justification for existence.

Most people believe that the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry are real and the legitimate facts resulting from scientific investigation over the past few centuries. Most people also believe that economics is a science. Well, it’s not quite that simple. Human behavior often follows consistent patterns – not quite “laws” – but as we all know people “break the law” frequently enough. In fact, people are partly rational, partly irrational, and partly non-rational. Neither economics nor sociology/anthropology, neither political science nor psychology, are entirely scientific.

Recent debates between conventional and behavioral economists testify to the limits of trying to force economics into a purely scientific model of knowledge. The purely “rational actor” conventional economics imagines, demonstrates those limits. The person who always seeks only the most monetarily profitable outcome does not exist. People choose their actions on any of numerous criteria, not just economic rationality. Besides, it’s often not all that easy to make the most economically rational choice.

Even the laws of natural science operate within limited parameters. We observe the laws of Newtonian physics to be entirely consistent within their limits. But they do not explain much in the post-Einstein world of quantum mechanics. The far less reliable “laws” of “free market economics” do not apply when markets are not free – which is most of the time. Yet, a great deal of effort is expended trying to convince government policy makers and the public otherwise. Corporate lobbyists want us all to believe that the corporatist economy must be retained because it is an expression of the laws of free markets – which it is not.

“Laws” of Convenience
In conventional economics, the underlying factual problem is that markets dominated by a few corporations are not free at all. In fact, the influence of the ‘free market’ ideology results in a lot of federal laws that have given more and more power to corporations. But that process is part of a package of claims that help sustain an oligarchy of corporate convenience, in part by perpetuating the fiction of free markets.

Another key ingredient supporting corporatocracy is the ideology of economic growth. The claim that well-being of the population depends on continued growth of the economy serves the economic elites quite well, if nobody else. The bankers get their compound interest; the corporate executives get their bonuses based on increased stock prices; the congressmen get their corporate campaign contributions and ‘dark money’ electoral support. Nature knows no political laws of economic convenience.

We ordinary actors in the economy are anything but free. But our willing participation in the consumerism that enables economic growth increasingly depends on debt. Corporate control and suppression of labor participation in the fruits of production require increased consumer indebtedness to keep consumption and growth going. The increasing concentration of power, income, and wealth in the economic elites, can only continue through debt-based consumerism.

Experiencing the Laws of Nature
In the debt-driven economy, we are constantly bombarded with incentives to consume more and more questionable products. That is what keeps the economy of growth going. But the so-called convenience of the many superfluous but cleverly distracting products ultimately becomes a burden, both physically and economically. Look at all the storage units spread across the suburban landscape. Too much stuff.

The consumerism of the endless growth economy drives continual demand for more energy to drive the factories and factory farms, and run the vehicles, appliances, and various toys of the consumer culture. The result is unequivocally clear. Massive carbon emissions over the 200 years of the industrial era have come home to roost. Drastic reductions in the burning of fossil fuels are necessary for survival. So are reductions in energy consumption. Both are needed to reduce carbon emissions.

Some energy production can be converted from fossil-fuel to renewable sources such as solar and wind. But every energy production technology requires energy to manufacture and install. We must also reduce the wasteful use of energy; that means reduce consumption. As Ozzie Zehner put it, “…the united states doesn’t have an energy crisis. It has a consumption crisis.”*

Most talk of reducing emissions involves replacing fossil-fuel energy production with renewable sources of energy production: solar, wind, and the highly counterproductive nuclear and biomass strategies. But far more efficient and economical strategies are readily available now. Retro-fitting existing buildings and factories to reduce energy consumption would create many jobs and require no new technology research. Local production for local consumption should become the norm. Just doing it is necessary. But whatever the mix of strategies, none of it will work until the consumerist culture recognizes that we will always experience the fruits of our labors in the laws of nature.
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* Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

In American political culture the idea of “corruption” is both simple and suppressed. We think of the occasional individual politician or official taking a bribe to direct funds to a particular bidder or contractor. Yet we have lost sight of the essence of corruption – exploitation – and the fact that it can take many forms but always has the same basic character. Individual instances are usually part of a larger pattern.

What is Corruption?
There are, of course, various kinds of corruption found in diverse institutional settings. The scope and scale of corruption may range from personal to systemic. An individual bureaucrat may take a bribe, or a CEO may take executive actions that serve his personal interests more than those of the company that pays him for making good decisions. He may trade securities on the basis of his inside information. If so, he has corrupted the responsibilities of his position by his unethical actions.

But systemic corruption occurs when a pattern of practices involves a number of members of an organization. In a major example, J.P. Morgan Chase and other large Wall Street banks fraudulently engaged in misrepresentation of risk, falsifying ‘due diligence’ and knowingly selling ‘toxic’ securities to clients.[1] Senators and representatives who take political donations from lobbyists and sponsor bills the lobbyist wrote, clearly corrupt the political process. But it is accepted as ‘business as usual’ in the Congress. We live in a corrupt political culture that is taken for granted by the politicians and by the corporate media that ‘reports’ on them. The corporate state is a corruption of democracy and has replaced all but its form.

In the case of law enforcement, you might remember hearing of a bygone era when an ethical challenge faced by the “cop on the beat” was simpler than we hear of today. While making his rounds an officer is offered a free cup of coffee or a meal at the local diner. The shopkeeper considers it good business to be ‘close’ with local police. This probably still happens somewhere. But that the practice is now recognized as currying favoritism. The “peace officer” was supposed to be a neutral figure, even-handedly enforcing the law. In our complex of corrupt institutional relations and practices today, law enforcement has become one of the institutional players. In the systematic corrupt pattern of practices within the nation’s political and legal institutions, law enforcement institutions have been severely corrupted.

Self Dealing
The “War on Drugs” is now pretty famous for having failed to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. Masses of vulnerable young men and women of color who use drugs at the same rate as everyone else are systematically incarcerated. The purpose of reducing drug use in society was turned into a practice of mass incarceration of selected target populations (blacks and browns). At the same time, the more powerful population segment (whites) is largely ignored. This is itself the corruption of a mission. But the practice of targeting the vulnerable for personal, departmental, or professional gain is yet a further level of corruption. Regardless of how ill-conceived, futile, and counterproductive the War on Drugs was and is, its conversion into a mechanism for profiteering by police departments and their corporate suppliers rates the highest condemnation.

This, of course, is closely related to the widespread militarization of civilian police. The more ‘drug arrests’ the more credits, loans, and funding for all sorts of power-imagineering paraphernalia. And once they get hold of a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ‘Use it or lose it’ has been the policy of Department of Defense when it distributes military equipment to local police. So, why not send out a SWAT team to serve a simple warrant? What is the bottom line? Well, it is the blatant shift of purpose from (legitimately) “protecting and serving” the public to (illegitimate but accepted) institutional self-aggrandizement. Power seeking and profiteering are practiced at the expense of the public interest in real public safety.

Theft as “Civil Asset Forfeiture”
By now most of us have heard of the police confiscating large sums of money, luxury cars, even mansions, from drug dealers when they are arrested. Laws were passed to support aggressive police actions against drug dealers. The loot came to be shared with local police departments that cooperated in or conducted successful raids. While such extra-judicial practices are constitutionally questionable in themselves, the practice has taken on another level of corruption. With no judicial or other check on the confiscation of the property of citizens where arrests have occurred but not necessarily indictments or convictions, the near complete corruption of the ideals of law enforcement was assured.

The practice of confiscating property from “suspects” has spread to a variety of situations where it would be hard to justify. Yet, unconstrained police now actively look for “goodies” that can be used by the department or liquidated for cash.[2] A “reason” for an arrest can usually be constructed. This, of course, is the ultimate corruption of law enforcement, since it is essentially the use of power to engage in legalized theft. This sort of behavior is hardly different than the shakedowns of organized crime or street gangs. “Reform” is a far too weak a word to use when trying to describe what is needed to bring back law enforcement institutions into a civil society where their job is simply to “keep the peace” and protect the public. The current conflict of institutional interests and the public interest is intolerable.

The growing privatization of the public sector has squeezed state and local government operations including law enforcement. That pressure encourages police to exploit opportunities presented by ill-conceived laws allowing unconstitutional searches and seizures. In a corrupt environment, the weak are corrupted. The weakness of police culture is palpable. Only mobilized public demand can change that.
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1. Matt Taibbi, “Meet the woman J P Morgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking.” Rolling Stone, November 6, 2014.
2. Shalla Dewan, “Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize.” New York Times. November 10, 2014.

We usually think of innovation as creating new technologies to solve problems or improve some industrial process, or invent new products. Throughout the Industrial Age, economic growth and productivity have resulted from innovations in the production of goods and services. The integration of new technologies with labor and new energy sources, first coal, then oil, and later nuclear power, resulted in rapid development. Cheap energy has been so plentiful in the industrial nations for most of that time that we have been comfortably complacent, assuming its permanence.

But now, the fossil-fuel driven growth economy has just about run its course. Resource depletion, overpopulation, over-consumption, financial crises, and peak everything leave little room for the continued economic expansionism on which social stability has been based for over 200 years. On top of that, the ultimate planetary limits imposed by accelerating climate disruption call upon humanity to innovate in heretofore unimagined ways.

One of the standard rationales used by business elites to argue for special tax breaks and subsidies is that they are needed to stimulate innovation. Even the Banksters throw up the idea that “financial innovation” will stimulate investment and job growth, to justify avoiding public regulation. They manipulate markets and sell fraudulent derivatives to pension funds and municipalities. Their overextended speculations caused the world banking crisis of 2008-9, from which we still suffer. It will happen again without real controls in place. That kind of innovation we can do without. Yet Attorney General Erik Holder cowers before the power of Jamie Diamond, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, one of the biggest offenders and one of Wall Street’s most powerful firms. Crime without punishment. These are artifacts of a corrupt and dying system.

Of course, looking at the actual cases of innovation and ingenuity in the real world of business, technology, or social sectors, which lead to actual benefits to society, we see a very different picture. Innovations come from the creativity of persons in situations. In contrast, financial manipulators operate in an abstract electronic environment. Some people are quite ingenious in creating new ways to acquire money. But money does not cause real-world innovation. Today, the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced calls for ingenuity and innovation of a completely different kind at a much grander scale than even the financial elite can imagine.

The Challenge
This time, a huge dose of human ingenuity is required by the rapid emergence of extreme circumstances. Yet, the elements of this crisis of humanity are barely recognized and are mostly seen as a vague future threat. Major innovations at scale are needed because of the severity and urgency of the need for massive collective action to abandon fossil-fuel and create an unprecedented societal transformation to reset our relation to the earth systems on which we depend for life.

Awareness is a very big challenge. We do, after all, live in a bubble, experientially quite isolated from the natural environment. Consider the overwhelming inundation of our senses by the images and symbols of consumer culture – from inside the bubble. Being “connected” has become both an essential resource and a source of endless thought-numbing consumerist propaganda. The total effect of nearly universal engagement with mass media is to shape much of the consciousness and beliefs of most people most of the time. That consciousness is closely tied to the fossil-fueled growth economy and its needs.

The one critical benefit of social media is what may remain of “net neutrality.” The Internet has been a major resource for the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Arab Spring movement, and the Peoples Climate Marches. These all indicate a broad awareness that something is very wrong. Naturally, social media venues are targets for corporate control, even though the Internet was created by government and universities funded by the taxpayers for public purposes. But social communication will be critical resource in shaping the new transformations required for human survival as environmental and economic disturbances accelerate in response to the climate disruptions that are already inevitable. Only if we are able to develop rapid methods for changing the relationship of human economies to energy systems will the great new challenge be met.

Ingenious Innovation
The 1% of the “1%” has a lock on the economic and political institutions. That is clear, and it is not about to change on its own. But as has been demonstrated in various historical examples, major social change can occur when large numbers of people recognize the problem and stand together in opposition to dictatorial regimes holding all the military power. We are not used to calling our government “dictatorial,” although various conspiracy theories seem to be on the rise. It is more accurate to view the new situation as “inverted totalitarianism,” as Sheldon Wolin describes it. A shell or façade of democracy is operated by the “deep state” (as former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren calls it) a plutocratic corporate-government institutional complex that works in its own interests, not the public interest.

In any case, the comprehensive transformation of society necessary to respond adequately to the crisis of rapidly destabilizing earth systems will not come from that entrenched corporate-state. Therefore it must arise from below. Many small local efforts are underway, from efforts to establish municipal solar utilities to public banking initiatives, but so much more is needed. We do have some examples of social transformation, but, as the title of Naomi Kline’s new book puts it so well, This Changes Everything.

Every situation is different – especially this one. Today contrasts with the familiar examples of the Collapse of small societies detailed by Jared Diamond. The problem of likely societal collapse due to environmental destruction at present is planetary. System failures caused by human actions can only be fixed by human action. Looming earth-system failures can only be fixed by community actions all over the globe involving innovative ways to quickly withdraw from the fossil-fuel energy systems and create ingenious non-destructive ways of life. That may be the greatest challenge to human ingenuity ever.

The Democrats have a serious problem. They have abandoned efforts to put into practice their traditional principles of supporting social and economic justice. In practical terms their election depends heavily on the largess of the rich and powerful. They are just as beholden to Wall Street and the corporate elite as are the Republicans. But as less reliable surrogates for corporate power than their Republican colleagues, they are also less well funded by the power elites. What’s a Democrat to do?

It seems clear that the Democrats will never be able to compete effectively for campaign funding in comparison with the Republicans. Generally, it is mostly the more liberal rich who will support them, and there are not enough wealthy liberals or liberal CEOs to level the electoral playing field.

Death of the Public Interest
Of course, the Republicans are in trouble too, but in different ways. They can’t seem to produce any legislation – and they consistently refuse to pass bills even based on their own ides if Obama favors them. But they have been very effective at voter suppression, gerrymandering, and pandering to their extreme right “base” from their vacuous ideological position of opposition to anything that does not further enrich their corporate and financial benefactors. The Public Interest is simply not part of the political equation.

The media narrative feigns attention to the public interest, but it plays off the hopes and fears of the general population to keep the narrative consistent with the interests of the corporate state. The media also parrots the ways the two parties frame the definitions of “issues,” as if those definitions emerged from the people rather than the financial and corporate powers that control the parties. Thus, it is not surprising to observe major misconceptions of public policy among the people.

When scientific surveys are conducted by independent researchers, not paid for by a political party, so called “public opinion” turns out to be quite different than when the corporate controlled networks or political consultants conduct them. The Affordable Care Act, widely referred to as “Obama Care,” is hated or liked depending on how the question is asked. When asked about specific provisions of the act, such as the elimination of “pre-existing conditions” as a means to exclude patients from insurance coverage, almost everyone reported favoring that provision. Yet many of the same people also reported that they oppose “Obama Care”. Similarly, I was amazed to watch “on the street” television interviews where people were asked if they liked Obama Care, to which most said no. Then the interviewer asked if they favored “The Affordable Care Act.” Most said, “oh, yes.”

Why this apparent contradiction? Well, it is clear that many people are not accurately informed about the Affordable Care Act or its politically charged shorthand designation. But it is obvious that many of them have been influenced by the racist anti-Obama propaganda that pervades talk radio and the corporate media. “Issues” are shaped by a news narrative that fits the political interests of the corporate and financial elites, not the concerns of citizens.

So, here is the Democrats’ dilemma. Democratic politicians are trapped in an ideological-financial bind. They cannot truly represent the interests of the public because that would cause the funding of their careers to be cut off. They have given up the fight for human and economic justice while retaining a hollow rhetoric of support for “jobs” and “economic growth,” “equal pay,” and sometimes even “civil rights.” They are locked into the political system of the corporatocracy. Sadly, they remain full participants in what I believe Russell Brand called “the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.” That certainly is how the corporate media portray the American political system. But it is just not that entertaining to the growing numbers who see through the thin rhetorical veil.

Reinventing Democracy for Survival
It is not working. More and more people recognize the false hope of “change we can believe in.” Whatever the accomplishments of the two Obama terms, the project for a (small-d) democratic America is in shambles. The Democratic Party façade is part of the problem and offers no solution. Despite rhetorical dance with ‘climate deniers,’ the so-called “national leadership” is going along to get along in a dying political economy that feeds them. The corporate economy continues accelerating not only planetary climate chaos, but very possibly human extinction. The scientific evidence is overwhelming and ignored.
None of this is about to change on its own. As people experiencing the growing crises of climate disruption, failing industrial food production, economic and financial disruption, and international conflicts over diminishing resources, they will begin to organize their lives in their local communities in more sustainable ways. In fact, many are already doing so. The Occupy Wall Street movement and recent Climate marches have already demonstrated the rapidly growing awareness that the changes we need are going to come from those who need them most: regular people in the communities where we live.